That has the air of a hastily cobbled-together article to counter a shitstorm.

Maureen Messent’s views as expressed in her column are her own and not those of the Birmingham Mail. Maureen is renowned for her straight talking and her opinions do not always find favour with everyone.’’

That has the air of a hastily cobbled-together article to counter a shitstorm.

Maureen Messent’s views as expressed in her column are her own and not those of the Birmingham Mail. Maureen is renowned for her straight talking and her opinions do not always find favour with everyone.’’

Why would you employ someone that you have to say that about??

Messent is a controversialist she comes out with this garbage because she is a talentless hack incapable of anything else. I really fear that one day one of these people is going to push someone too far and the consequences don't bear thinking about

That has the air of a hastily cobbled-together article to counter a shitstorm.

Maureen Messent’s views as expressed in her column are her own and not those of the Birmingham Mail. Maureen is renowned for her straight talking and her opinions do not always find favour with everyone.’’

Why would you employ someone that you have to say that about??

In other words. "I don't care who she offends as long as she sells papers."

I think that a major problem with all news media is the belief that the only professional duty is to fill space and make noise - that as long as you're being talked about, that's good. Oh, and to avoid legal action.

The British inherently racist, as allegedly revealed in a NatCen poll?

I don’t think so. Islanders can’t prosper without their overseas trade. We rely on foreigners coming to trade and settle here, to sell their skills to us – recall how the Cornish welcomed the Phoenicians’ gold and silks after the Romans lost influence here, but left us their roads.

Long before the 1066 Norman Conquest, the French had established the Thames as their main trading route for wine exports, had intermarried and settled here. Huguenot weavers followed (their beautiful old homes still a tourist attraction in Lavenham, Suffolk).

In parts of deepest Devon, the descendants of Dutch settlers retain their own language at home but reveal rolling Devonian accents on Newton Abbot’s market days.

The Jews became the main social grouping in London’s East End. The Irish helped rebuild post-war Britain. Our modern NHS would collapse were Asians to leave it. And, here in Birmingham, the Sikh Wouhra family have become the Asian trading elite with their East End Food conglomerate after two brothers began selling eggs door-to-door in Wolverhampton in the 1960s.

Throughout history, the persecuted, dispossessed, the poverty-stricken have arrived here from across what was called “the narrow sea” to make better lives for themselves by earning to educate their children in return for selling us their sweat and skills.

The suspicion of some new settlers we see today isn’t colour-based racism or xenophobia, simply the response to the new face of immigration here.

Large chunks of the British feel recent new-comers, arriving with totally unrealistic notions of self-entitlement that have been shored-up by our over-generous welfare system, reveal cynical greed and pushiness before they’ve contributed a penny to our national kitty.

davidjay wrote:
Large chunks of the British feel recent new-comers, arriving with totally unrealistic notions of self-entitlement that have been shored-up by our over-generous welfare system, reveal cynical greed and pushiness before they’ve contributed a penny to our national kitty.

That’s not racism, though.

Yes it fucking well is, Maureen, you despicable old bigot.

"Large chunks" of the thickorati feel that because shitty, bigoted media commentators like you, Maureen, keep fucking telling them that's how things are. You lying, shrivelled old arse that you are.

"The opportunity to serve our country. That is all we ask." John Smith, Leader of the Labour Party, 10 May 1994.

What Maureen is saying is that a thousand years of immigration have contributed greatly to the well-being of the nation, right up until she (or her parents, I'm not sure whether she's first or second generation immigrant) arrived, after which they all became welfare scroungers.

Fuck off Messent, you sneering, snobbish hypocrite. At least Nick Griffin is honest about his racism.

Big Rob

As a young man Cameron looked out on the social carnage of pit closures and mass unemployment, looked at Margaret Thatcher's government and thought, these are my people. When all the debating is done, that is really all I need to know.

youngian wrote:One cliche the Messents of this world seem to miss is; "these trendy metropolitan liberals would think differently if immigrants moved down their road."

She lives, or did live until recently, in Balsall Heath, which is about as multiracial as you can get and often talks about how well she gets on with her Asian neighbours. They, of course, know their place and don't go in for any of this community action nonsense.